assured himself, like a prudent man, that
his table was secure, having ordered his oysters, his chablis, and his
'potage a la bisque,' now paced calmly and slowly across the salon, and
halted before Lemercier.

Here let me pause for a moment, and give the reader a rapid sketch of
the two Parisians.

Frederic Lemercier is dressed, somewhat too showily, in the extreme of
the prevalent fashion. He wears a superb pin in his cravat,--a pin worth
two thousand francs; he wears rings on his fingers, 'breloques' to his
watch-chain. He has a warm though dark complexion, thick black eyebrows,
full lips, a nose somewhat turned up, but not small, very fine large
dark eyes, a bold, open, somewhat impertinent expression of countenance;
withal decidedly handsome, thanks to colouring, youth, and vivacity of
regard.

Lucien Duplessis, bending over the table, glancing first with curiosity
at the Marquis de Rochebriant, who leans his cheek on his hand and
seems not to notice him, then concentrating his attention on Frederic
Lemercier, who sits square with his hands clasped,--Lucien Duplessis
is somewhere between forty and fifty, rather below the middle height,
slender, but not slight,--what in English phrase is called "wiry." He
is dressed with extreme simplicity: black frockcoat buttoned up;
black cravat worn higher than men who follow the fashions wear their
neckcloths nowadays; a hawk's eye and a hawk's beak; hair of a dull
brown, very short, and wholly without curl; his cheeks thin and smoothly
shaven, but he wears a mustache and imperial, plagiarized from those of
his sovereign, and, like all plagiarisms, carrying the borrowed beauty
to extremes, so that the points of mustache and imperial, stiffened and
sharpened by cosmetics which must have been composed of iron, looked
like three long stings guarding lip and jaw from invasion; a pale
olive-brown complexion, eyes small, deep-sunk, calm, piercing; his
expression of face at first glance not striking, except for quiet
immovability. Observed more heedfully, the expression was keenly
intellectual,--determined about the lips, calculating about the brows:
altogether the face of no ordinary man, and one not, perhaps, without
fine and high qualities, concealed from the general gaze by habitual
reserve, but justifying the confidence of those whom he admitted into
his intimacy.

"Ah, mon cher," said Lemercier, "you promised to call on me yesterday at
two o'clock. I waited in for you half